People who don’t attend Quaker schools often remark, upon learning about Meeting for Worship, that speaking during Silence sounds like a terrifying prospect. They are correct, which is why, in practice, most Meetings for Worship consist of twenty minutes of unbroken Silence. When someone stands up to speak, it’s like bumping into Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman at the video store on West Twenty-second Street: you have to play it cool, but there’s no denying it’s the most interesting thing that will happen all day.
